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Archive for April, 2015

I wonder first if Mandel’s analysis of Marx’s views on rent is correct and second whether it is useful for example in understanding super profits in the mining industry in Australia and their collapse in the last year or so, presumably because with increased mechanisation mining companies have broken down the barriers that are the ‘eternal’ monopoly of for example land, state ownership of minerals and their non-renewable nature, and ensured surplus value in the mining industry ‘enters the general process of (re)distribution of profit throughout the economy as a whole thrown their profits into the surplus value production.’

Writing in the Irish Socialist Worker Memet Uludag argues that we must support refugees, oppose the imperialism that drowns them at sea and build a political alternative that embraces our humanity, not hatred. Among other things Memet explains the increase in deaths this year in the Mediterranean are the result of rotten racist anti-immigrant policy changes by the EU.

But why stop with funding Bjorn Lomborg, Mr Pyne? Surely this government could also be funding a creation science think tank, an anti-vaccination research centre, a gay conversion institute and a 9/11 conspiracy colloquium? The possibilities are endless. Who knows, maybe we could convince Cory Bernardi to leave politics and head up a government funded ten year study into the links between gay marriage and bestiality?

Here is a 20 second video of Tony Abbott, a grog monster (his words) and Australia’s Prime Minister, doing one thing well – being a grog monster. Says it all about Australia today. The glass is fully empty.

My article on tax avoidance and tax reform in the hot off the presses Solidarity Magazine​.

I conclude:

The revelations about how little tax big business pays undermine any proposals for new or increased taxes on workers and the poor, or cuts to government spending. Every time Abbott or Hockey talk about the need to reform our tax system or cut social spending on workers and the poor, we now have a simple rejoinder—stop the cuts and tax the rich.

These ball park figures would indicate that a tax of 100% on any earnings of the one per cent above $250,000 would potentially bring in $36,000,000,000 annually. That is $36 billion a year in tax revenue. This is a handy amount for public health, education, transport, pensions, the disabled and to address climate change.

Michael Kandelaars writes in US Socialist Worker (republished from Red Flag) about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the treaty that outlaws democracy. He finishes off by saying:

What is needed today is not more free trade, but a world where the resources are shared and used for the benefit of the majority of the population. A world in which the sick aren’t priced out of lifesaving medicines. A world in which those who do the work democratically control what we produce.

This is the complete opposite of the world the TPP stands for. The TPP must be opposed.